Donald Trump Won’t Push to Prosecute Hillary Clinton, For Now

Despite the litany of campaign-trail calls to throw Hillary Clinton in prison for using a private e-mail server, Donald Trump appeared to check his more authoritarian impulses Tuesday, telling The New York Times during an on-the-record conversation that he doesn’t intend to jail his defeated political opponent.

“My inclination would be for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let's go forward.This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseum,” Trump told the Times, according to reporter Maggie Haberman. “I think it would be very very divisive for the country.” Hours earlier, Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, had made the same point in an interview on MSNBC. Clinton “still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy,” she told the hosts of Morning Joe, describing Trump’s magnanimity as a favor. “If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing.”

Still, Trump isn’t in charge of whether the F.B.I. continues to investigate the former secretary of state, nor whether the Department of Justice pursues charges. And when asked by Times reporters whether he was taking further investigations, the president-elect responded, “no.”

Reneging on his repeated calls to assign a special prosecutor to go after Clinton is just the latest in a series of campaign promises Trump has abandoned in the two weeks since he was elected president, including a ban on Muslim immigration (Trump is now hedging), building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border (a mere “campaign device”, according to Newt Gingrich), and dismantling Obamacare (he’d like to keep the most popular parts.) But Trump’s most adamant supporters aren’t taking this particular betrayal well. “BROKEN PROMISE” blared the headline atop Breitbart News, the alt-right organ previously run by top Trump adviser Stephen Bannon, after Conway appeared on MSNBC.

Asked about disappointing his supporters, Trump told the New York Times they would get over it. “I don't think they will be disappointed,” he said, according to Haberman’s Twitter. “I think I will explain it that we in many ways will save our country.”

But even if Donald Trump has backed away from one of his most potent campaign talking points, at least one conservative group is continuing the fight on his behalf. Currently, Clinton is tied up in litigation filed by from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization that is demanding she provide more details about the private server that sat in the basement of her Chappaqua home during her tenure as secretary of state. On Monday, her lawyers filed a motion opposing a request that Clinton answer more questions from Judicial Watch, saying that their inquiry went beyond the scope of what was authorized by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, such as why the server was created and whether she had known about the prohibition on unclassified devices at the State Department. The State Department also filed a response Monday backing Clinton. Still, the defeated Democratic nominee is not yet in the clear. House Republicans previously promised they would investigate Clinton to the fullest extent of their power under the law the law; just because Trump has said he’s not interested in “locking her up” anymore, that doesn’t mean Congress will feel the same way.